Hurd was found dead in the woods in Hillside Park early on February 23. According to the charging document, Mitchell stabbed Hurd to death after the two argued during a walk. One of Hurd's friends told investigators that Anna planned to leave Minnesota the next day by herself on a bus to Texas, but Mitchell apparently planned to head south with her.

According to the charges, police received a call from Mitchell's mother at 4:29 a.m. reporting that her son had told her he'd found Hurd "beaten on a trail and that she wasn't breathing." Police drove to Mitchell's house, and he led them to Hurd's body, which was found a short distance off a path.

Mitchell said he and Hurd went for a walk sometime after 1:30 a.m. He acknowledged the two had gotten in an argument and said he'd returned home by himself. But Mitchell told investigators that he grew worried a couple of hours later when he hadn't heard from Hurd and decided to head out and search for her.

Mitchell's mother saw him return home "a short time later with blood on his hands and 'hysterical,'" the charges say. But this is where his story started to fall apart. From the charging document:

[Mitchell] did not go upstairs to the bathroom after he returned home and told his mother to call 911. During a search of [Mitchell's] home, investigators identified blood smears on the vanity in the upstairs bathroom and traces of blood on a towel also found in this bathroom. Testing of the evidence reveals that the DNA profiles from these samples match [Hurd's] DNA profile.

During the investigation, Mitchell gave authorities inconsistent accounts of the circumstances in which he found Hurd's body. He initially told them he didn't see anybody nearby, but later gave a detailed description of a man he saw standing over Hurd's belongings on the path. He was also seen playing with a knife at a party earlier that night.

More from the charging document:

When asked about the relationship between [Mitchell] and [Hurd], witnesses stated that [Mitchell] is controlling and "clingy." During a recent fight between the two, [Mitchell] had reportedly become so angry with [Hurd] that he hurt one of her kittens. He also had reportedly threatened to kill himself when [Hurd] attempted to end their relationship sometime in the past. A witness further told police that during the evening of February 22, 2013 [Hurd] confided to her that [Hurd] planned to end her relationship with [Mitchell] and go to Texas the next day without him.

According to Hurd's father, Anna had recently been texting a boy in Texas, and Mitchell knew about it and was very upset. But other reports described Mitchell and Hurd as "inseparable," and Hurd's father told the Pioneer Press he thought of Mitchell as "a pretty decent young man."